Tag Archives: Robert Zemeckis

If you prefer to check out movies in IMAX, you will want to know that Robert Zemeckis’ The Walk – the story of how French tightrope walker Philippe Petit crossed from one building to the other at the World Trade Center – will be released in IMAX 3D on September 30th, nine days before its wide release on October 9th.

Forty years ago today, a French tightrope artist named Philippe Petit walked from one World Trade Center tower to the other on an illegal wire. It was a caper worthy of Mission: Impossible and the subject of an award-winning documentary, Man on Wire. But neither Petit’s book, To Reach The Clouds, nor Man on Wire could do what Robert Zemeckis is about to do – put you up there with Petit in a 3D/IMAX 3D film.

It’s called The Walk and stars, among others, Joseph Gordon-Levitt (as Petit), Ben Kinglsey (Iron Man 3), James Badge Dale (Flight) and Charlotte Le Bon (The Hundred-Foot Journey). The Walk will premiere on October 5, 2015. Further details await just beyond the jump.

In Robert Zemeckis’ Flight, Denzel Washington plays an airline pilot who saves his passengers and crew with a unique maneuver. After being hailed a hero, suspicions that he might have been under the influence arise.

Disney’s A Christmas Carol surprises in that not only is it a wonderful film, it doesn’t actually dress up the tradition Dickens tale with too much action movie fooferaw.

By now, what with everyone from Mr. Magoo to Tim Curry having played the humbugging Dickens miser, Ebenezer Scrooge, there are very few people who don’t know the story of how he is haunted by the ghosts of Christmas past, present and future and regains his lost humanity. The question is merely whether Robert Zemeckis’ 3-D CGI workup works on its own merits.

Roger Zemeckis has created an amazing world in Beowulf – the CG adaptation of the epic poem we all suffered through in high school English. Here, though, we get a loose adaptation that assigns human motivations to the major players – including the decidedly inhuman Grendel and his mother. Does it work? Just often enough make the expensive 3D process worth it.